ffmpeg | How can i get the best quality / filezise ratio converting to FLV

[landuchi]

Hello,

I am developing an application for storing and viewing videos. The aplicacion runs on linux (Debian & Red Hat Enterprise) and uses ffmpeg for conversion.

I have been researching and playing a little with ffmpeg settings to convert different formats to FLV, this is the command line I'm using right now.

ffmpeg -i "video.wmv" -ar 44100 -ab 64kb -ac 2 -b 400kb -qmin 8 -s 320x240 -y "video.flv"

I have compared my results with youtube's conversion and with about the same quality my FLVs are 20% ~ 30% bigger in size.

I was wondering:
- what settings can i use to get the best quality / size ratio?
- which video format ffmpeg handles better?

I am a codec newbie, i would apreciate if you can tell the relation betwen the settings as well. Also, if you need any aditional information or sample files, just ask away.

Thanks in advance!

[budwzr]

I think the .FLV codec in ffmpeg is the older Sorenson, and Youtube uses VP6.

I would think that 300kbps would be plenty for 320x240, and 500 for DVD or bigger.

[sp0oon]

I also use ffmpeg and I would love to know the best settings aswell. I've tried -sameq and even -qscale 1 but it still seems blotchy.